When Meir Dagan says the machine of government is broke, and that this is ultimately going to lead to Israel’s downfall, we all know he is right.

Dear Reader,
As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before.
Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications,
like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations,
we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open
and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news
and analyses from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.

Meir Dagan, the immediate former head of the Mossad who is called the “iceman”
by some, has had a meltdown. Like a foodaholic released into an ice cream store
after years of denial, Dagan, the former spy, has hit the headlines insatiably,
giving interviews to television, radio, print and Internet reporters at every
opportunity.

Thankfully, he has withdrawn from his earliest public
comments made when just out of service demanding there be a public debate on
whether Israel should attack Iran’s nukes, and intimating that without his
guidance the country was being left in inexperienced hands and with leaders who
were going to make the wrong decision.

The arrogance of it all was
stunning, as was the about-face from being advocate of an aggressive policy on
Iran, to suggesting that the military option be taken off the table by Israel,
though Dagan, like few others, knows just how important the fear of such an
option by the Iranians is to the advancement of any diplomatic efforts to
contain them.

He also knows that like the truism that terror alone will
not conquer Israel, so sabotage alone will not stop the progress of the program
if the Iranians want to make advances. The Stuxnet worm that struck Iran’s
nuclear computers in June 2010 was extremely effective. Within months, however,
they had more sophisticated, and more advanced, centrifuges separating fissile
material than before.

The assassination of key Iranian atomic scientists,
the defection of others to the West, the massive explosions that have hit
nuclear producing facilities, the uncovering of others and exposing them to the
world, have all taken their toll, but none has been existential to the Iranian
program.

Israel has no option but to have the threat of preemptive
military action against Iran on the table, and it is reckless and more than
inappropriate of Dagan to have suggested that if it is carried out, those doing
so were irresponsible and ill equipped to do so.

That said, in the deluge
of interviews in which he must have said that he could not possibly answer this
or that three hundred times, he did say something of tremendous importance that
should not go unnoticed.

JPOST VIDEOS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU:

He pointed to a threat he considered, and I
concur, is a far greater threat to Israel’s existence than any misguided and
delusional ayatollah: Israel’s political system. He was going to dedicate his
future energies, he said, to start a wellfunded, apolitical campaign to bring
some order and manageability to how this country is run.

Key to this, he
explained, was limiting the number of parties that can run for the Knesset, thus
negating the need for the broad-based coalitions that have been both the
benchmark and plague of Israeli politics until now, a worthy and noble
cause.

Dagan claims he does not want to be a politician but only to
reform politics.

There are skeptics who say “sure,” but I believe him. In
the same vein that because of his background he should not have made the remarks
he did, it is because of his background that his clarion call for a major change
in the political system, should be taken so seriously.

It comes from
someone who has seen how governments formed under the present system work; how
narrow, political, parochial, political considerations have overridden major
national ones; the backstabbing and the constant threats of walkouts by minority
but essential partners, that make rational decision-making impossible, where
defense budgets are dictated not by the enemy’s strength, but the payoffs the
governing party can dish out to its supporters.

Dagan’s call for
political reform is not new, but it is unique coming someone who has been
entrusted with Israel’s security at the highest level, who knows every secret
there is about the realities facing this vulnerable country, the problems
involved with not resolving the Palestinian issue, the potential volatility of
the Israeli Arab community, the demographic challenges posed by the haredim in
their current format, and the much-needed priority of improving the education
system. These are all things he knows about.

Of all these and other
doomsday scenarios we will never know about, it is Israel’s political system
Dagan feels he must address if the country is to survive; the one concrete issue
he has decided to put on the public agenda now that the initial Iranian fiasco
has run its course.

He has seen life-and-death situations decided on, and
is obviously not happy with the decision-making process that went into them; he
was publicly disdainful of Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak over Iran, but is
probably more fearful of them being pulled in unwanted directions by coalition
extremists they feel they have to cater to. He has seen, over and over again,
national interests coming second to political ones, and the startling
inefficiency of a government bureaucracy made heavy with coalition-generated
jobs, and staffed by people whose loyalties are to their boss, not the country.
He has seen the rampant mediocrity caused by coalition politics, and the dearth
of leadership created by people who have to please everyone all the time instead
of having a vision and carving a path forward.

What exactly Dagan
proposes to do on how to change the political system is not the issue. He is no
constitutional specialist. If anything his last job, one hopes, was to skirt
around the law and behave outside the norm. His comments on Netanyahu and Barak
may have been intended to rein them in from making impetuous decisions. I think
it was a mistake to have made them.

But when Dagan says the machine of
government is broke, and that this is ultimately going to lead to Israel’s
downfall, we all know he is right. We also know that the politicians, being
dependent on political partnerships in the way they are, cannot solve the
problem themselves.

Maybe we should call in the Mossad.

The writer
is a senior research associate at the Institute for Strategic Studies at Tel
Aviv University. His most recent book, The Anatomy of Israel’s Survival, was
published by Public Affairs, New York, in the fall.

Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>

The Jerusalem Post Customer Service Center can be contacted with any questions or requests:
Telephone: *2421 * Extension 4 Jerusalem Post or 03-7619056 Fax: 03-5613699E-mail: subs@jpost.com
The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 07:00 and 14:00 and Fridays only handles distribution requests between 7:00 and
13:00
For international customers: The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 7AM and 6PM
Toll Free number in Israel only 1-800-574-574
Telephone +972-3-761-9056
Fax: 972-3-561-3699
E-mail: subs@jpost.com